By Douglas Martin
New York Times
NEW YORK — In the early 1970s, fires ravaged New York City as arson, neglect and racial tensions ran rampant. The city’s firefighters, almost all of whom were white, were sometimes attacked — with guns, rocks, peashooters and even refrigerators dropped from rooftops — when they responded to alarms in minority neighborhoods, where most of the blazes erupted. Adding insult to injury, hundreds of the alarms were false.
But as fires increased by more than half, the number of firefighters decreased by a third. With the city spiraling toward a fiscal crisis, the firefighting budget was, in increments, cut by $100 million. More than 50 firefighting companies were eliminated.
Throughout these years, Michael J. Maye, who died Feb. 15, had the thankless job of heading the firefighters’ union, the Uniformed Firefighters Association. Making his position more difficult, state law prohibited him from calling job actions, like slowdowns or strikes. Making the position almost impossible, his own membership had passed a bylaw requiring an immediate job action when a labor contract expired and no new one had been signed.
Full story: Michael J. Maye, Scrappy Leader of Firefighters’ Union, Dies at 82